There’s a lot going on again (again, again, again, AGAIN, AGAIN), and it’s making me introspective. Trying to use that inclination to be productive. Indulge me a bit, please.

There are so many things I go over and over in my head about, even waaaay long after the fact. I mean, yes, stupid little things, like responding to “enjoy your meal” with “you, too!” Or thinking if I’d just checked a third time to be sure my work keys were in my backpack– And stupid things from first grade, conversations with people I hardly even remember– Going over arguments I never actually even had– Because that’s useful.

I keep going back to my one and only attempt at a not-horror-murdery-spooky story, where I was dubious from the beginning if I’m even capable of writing something light / romancey (I talked just a little about it in 2013). There are parts of it I can see I scrabbled for, because I had no idea what this thing was supposed to look like. I’d read a couple of other Happy Ending type things here and there that I wasn’t enthusiastic about and when I look at that story now, it’s like someone vaguely explained to me what a giraffe looks like and I thought I could make one out of Dumpster scraps that would be just as good as the real thing if I just used enough super glue and force of will. I took common components I’d found in other stories and out of sheer desperation (and no small amount of low confidence), just– painted them in a rough approximation of what I thought would make it fit in with the other giraffes. There are bits I don’t even remember writing, but I know what it looks like when I’m trying to force it to work. It looks like sloppy scenes and cheap-shot troubles. The further away I get from that time, the more I’m disgusted with it and I want to print several copies just to get the visceral thrill of burning the words physically, and in doing so, burning them from my mind. (Guess who’s feeling melodramatic!) I just really wanted to be able to do the thing. And I did it with such a half-assed approach. While I’ve never really cared for much that I write, it’s one of the few things I think I’m maybe ACTUALLY ashamed of. There are bits I know I didn’t really even want to touch and I still used them! That’s how little I bothered! I feel like I really owe it to those characters to give them proper lives and to apologize for having them exist purely for my own convenience. Yes, I’m aware they’re fictional and my own creation, but uuuugh.

Ultimately, though, I don’t think I want to try to rework that one and I keep thinking maybe I really should take it down.

THEN AGAIN MAYBE IT SHOULD STAND AS A TESTAMENT TO MY DISGRACE. THIS WRITER IS A WORK IN PROGRESS. LET IT BE KNOWN THAT SHE RELIED ON THE CHEAPEST, EASIEST TO GRAB PARTS INSTEAD OF TAKING THE TIME AND CARE NECESSARY TO BUILD A GOOD WORLD AND STRONG CHARACTERS.

Either way, I don’t want to rework it. If I’m going to delve into unfamiliar territory, I need to do my goddamn research and actually bother to think about how human interaction works. It’s not like I don’t know there’s no mold to good story telling. It’s certainly not how I approach the spooky or silly things I write, so why the heck did I even think that might be okay to write anything else? Goooosh. I need to just do something new. Maybe scavenge a bit from that disaster, but probably not much at all.

Right, enough scolding myself. Just need to do the thing. I need to write happy things. I’m tired. It really needs to be happy things.